Rushing to judgment, once just a lamentable hobby, has evolved with modern American culture into social media bloodsport. It’s what people do these days. They hear, they see and they react.

Often they’re right, sometimes not. Usually that part is sorted out later — well after hard-and-fast opinions have been formed.

With that in mind, we usually try to take the measure of a situation, listen to multiple sides or witnesses, then offer to all involved something few seem willing to do anymore: The benefit of the doubt before reaching a conclusion.

Which brings us to the flap arising this week in the N.C. General Assembly and caused, ostensibly, by Ssate Sen. Rick Gunn, R-Alamance. During his oversight of a Senate Commerce Committee meeting in Raleigh on Tuesday in which the most controversial environmental issue in the state — subterranean drilling for gas, or fracking — was being discussed, Gunn made an unusual request of those present. According to media accounts he said, “One other housekeeping (item), if I may. As a courtesy, all individuals with recording devices, whether audio or video, are required to be approved by the sergeant-at-arms.”

Trouble is, there is no such requirement to register recording devices in the General Assembly or its building. Gunn just made it up without consulting the rules. As a result, a reporter’s recording device was seized by the Senate’s Sergeant-at-Arms Office, which was a violation of the state’s Open Meetings Law. Reporters, and just plain everyday folks for that matter, are allowed to have recording devices in public meetings.

For his part, Gunn called the flap a misunderstanding and said it was never his intent to have the sergeant-at-arms confiscate a reporter’s equipment.

Then Gunn stumbled over questions posed by reporters on the scene — referring queries to the Sergeant-at Arms Office. But upon further review it appears committee chairs are the ones accountable. The sergeant-at-arms merely acts upon requests.

Gunn later clarified his position, “If I’m in charge of a meeting, it will be open and recordable and transparent, which is how it should be. We have always run, and will continue to run, open and transparent meetings.”

Plausible, but it didn’t happen that way and ultimately Gunn is the one responsible. Frankly, we expect elected leaders to know and follow the rules — especially when it comes to open government.

This story provides another window into what seems to be a troubling mindset among political leaders in North Carolina these days. Evidence continues to grow that there is an air of not only smug superiority by politicians over the rights of the public to have access to how decisions are made, but derision toward those who question such decisions.

And we can’t help but wonder about the irony of this situation. A political body’s first inclination is to take away a reporting device intended to help ensure accuracy.